Moby-Dick; or The Whale

A full-length novel by American author Melville. Published in 1851. In the early 19th century, the elderly whaling captain Ahab has one of his legs bitten off by the giant white sperm whale Moby Dick. Seeking revenge, Ahab relentlessly pursues the giant whale, and after a three-day deadly battle near the equator in the Pacific Ocean, he is finally defeated and disappears to the bottom of the sea along with the whaling ship Pequod. The story is told by the only one to survive, a young man named Ishmael. The white captain Ahab and the first mate are at the top of the ship, followed by Indians, South Sea natives, Zoroastrian Asians, and blacks. These representatives of humanity, so to speak, fight a bold battle against primordial nature, where innocence and evil coexist, and ultimately end up defeated and destroyed. A kind of apocalyptic metaphorical world unfolds spectacularly. The structure of this novel is quite different from that of a normal novel, with an etymology section and a literature section at the beginning, and countless pedantic essays on cetology, whaling, and nature mixed into the story. What's more, the most distinctive feature of this work is how the extensive encyclopedic epistemology gradually transforms into a magnificent poetic fantasy. The poetic eloquence of the story, told in powerful prose, makes the conflict between primordial nature and modern man, and the eerie tragic relationship, more effective in getting to the reader.

[Ginsaku Sugiura]

"Moby Dick, translated by Ichino Hiroshi (1980, Shueisha)" ▽ "Deconstructing 'Moby Dick' by Yagi Toshio (1986, Kenkyusha Publishing)" ▽ "Moby Dick: Its Hellenistic and Christian Thought by Maeda Reiko (1994, Osaka Kyoiku Tosho)" ▽ "Moby Dick, volumes 1, 2 and 3, translated by Abe Tomoji (Iwanami Bunko)" ▽ "Moby Dick, volumes 1 and 2, translated by Tanaka Nishijiro (Shincho Bunko)" ▽ "Moby Dick, volumes 1 and 2, translated by Sengoku Hideyo (Kodansha Bungei Bunko)"

Source: Shogakukan Encyclopedia Nipponica About Encyclopedia Nipponica Information | Legend

アメリカの作家メルビルの長編小説。1851年刊。19世紀前期、初老の捕鯨船長エイハブが巨大な白いマッコウクジラ、モービィ・ディックに片脚を咬(か)み取られ、その報復を求めて執拗(しつよう)に巨鯨を追跡し、太平洋の赤道近くで3日間に及ぶ死闘を繰り広げたあとついに敗北、捕鯨船ピークォド号もろとも海底の藻屑(もくず)と消える物語で、これをただ一人生還した青年イシュメールに語らせる仕組みになっている。エイハブ船長や一等航海士らの白人を頂点とし、これにインディアン、南海の先住民、拝火教徒のアジア人、黒人などの乗組員が続き、いわば人類の代表者たちが無垢(むく)と魔性の混在する原初的自然に果敢な戦いを挑み、ついには敗北と破滅に至る。一種、黙示録暗喩(あんゆ)の世界が壮絶に展開する。通常の小説構造とは著しく異なり、巻頭には語源部や文献部が付され、物語のなかに鯨学や捕鯨業、自然に関する衒学(げんがく)的エッセイが無数に混じる。しかも該博な百科全書的認識論がいつしか壮大な詩的幻想に変貌(へんぼう)していくところに、この作品の大きな特徴がある。そして雄渾(ゆうこん)な文章で語られる詩的饒舌(じょうぜつ)につられて、原初的自然と近代人との確執、不気味な悲劇的関係がより効果的に読者に迫ってくる。

［杉浦銀策］

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